Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

“ [230] us, desolate our fields, burn our dwellings, lay our cities in ruins, murder our people, and reduce us to beggary, but you cannot subdue or subjugate us to your Government or your will. Your conquest, if you gain one, will cost you a hundred thousand lives, and more than a hundred million dollars. Nay, more, it will take a standing army of a hundred thousand men and millions of money, annually, to keep us in subjection. You may whip us, but we will not stay whipped. We will rise again and again to vindicate our right to liberty, and to throw off your oppressive and cursed yoke, and never cease the mortal strife until our whole white race is extinguished, and our fair land given over to desolation. You may have ships of war, and we may have none. You may blockade our ports and lock up our commerce. We can live, if need be, without commerce. But when you shut out our cotton from the looms of Europe, we shall see whether other nations will not have something to say and something to do on that subject. Cotton is King! and it will find means to raise your blockade and disperse your ships.”

Iverson prudently kept himself away from all personal danger during the war that ensued; and in less than a year he saw his overrated monarch dethroned, and heard the cry of the great distress of his own people. His truculent colleague, Toombs, had already, as we have seen, gone home to work the machinery by which the people of Georgia were unwillingly placed in an attitude of rebellion. Toombs had also been bringing one of his Northern admirers in subserviency to his feet, in this wise:--Early in January, it became known to the Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police of New York, who were not under the control of the Mayor, that large quantities of arms, purchased of Northern manufacturers and merchants, were going southward. It was resolved to rut a stop to traffic that would evidently prove injurious to the Government, and late in the month

January 22, 1861.

nearly forty boxes of arms, consigned to parties in Georgia and Alabama, and placed on board the steamer Monticello, bound for Savannah, were seized by the New York police. The fact was immediately telegraphed to Governor Brown, at Milledgeville. Toombs was there, and took the matter into his own hands. He telegraphed

January 24.

as follows to the Mayor of New York:--“Is it true that arms, intended for, and consigned to the State of Georgia, have been seized by public authorities in New York? Your answer is important to us and New York. Answer at once.”

This insolent demand of a private citizen-one who had lately boasted, in his place in the National Senate, that he was a rebel and a traitor (and who, no one doubted, wanted these very arms for treasonable purposes), was obsequiously complied with. The Mayor (Fernando Wood) expressed his regret, but disclaimed for the city of New York any “responsibility for the outrage,” as he called it. “As Mayor,” he said, “I have no authority over the police. If I had the power, I should summarily punish the authors of this illegal and unjustifiable seizure of private property.”

Toombs determined to retaliate. The Governor, who seems to have been a plastic servant of this conspirator, had asked the Legislature for power to retaliate, should there be an occasion, but his request had not been granted. Toombs advised him to act without law, and he did so. By his order, ships